At eight days, the Transsiberian Express from Beijing to Moscow is the longest train journey in the world. So why wouldn’t it be the perfect backdrop to one of the most suspenseful journeys in quite some time? Paul Anderson’s (Beirut, The Machinist) presents the Transsiberian in a way that makes you think of Alfred Hitchcock. It’s dark. It’s moody. It’s twisted. It’s purposeful. It’s rooted. It’s intense. It makes you feel like a fellow passenger on this train, watching everything unfold next to you rather than on a screen projected in front of you. Oh. And it’s cold. It’s like an Arctic cold. We feel that sense of dread in the deepest of winter in the coldest places. Yet, it never feels like we are even close to approaching freezing. So it certainly adds to the ambiance of our film.
Category Archives: Drama
Lost in Translation (2003)
Sofia Coppola (The Virgin Suicides, The Bling Ring) struck gold with the Bill Murray/Scarlett Johansson dramedy Lost in Translation, one of the most original films of all time and one of the best movies of 2003. This instant cult classic explores themes of isolation, loneliness, broken relationships, boredom, cultural shock, existentialism, and instantaneous friendship, all in a quick 102-minute gem where each scene matters and every word carries a vast amount of weight.
Gold (2017)
Matthew McConaughey (Dallas Buyer’s Club, Mud) stars as a balding, crooked-toothed, potbellied Nevada gold prospector in a movie that, without his acting talent, would have been completely sifted through the Hollywood stream of consciousness. Instead, while flawed, Stephen Gaghan’s (Syriana, Abandon) Gold is a watchable experience that takes audiences on a wild goose chase along with most of its stars. It ultimately makes the destination an endpoint and the journey worthwhile.
Rocketman (2019)
Dexter Fletcher’s (Sunshine on Leith, Eddie the Eagle) Rocketman will be compared to 2018’s Bohemian Rhapsody. So, I will get that comparison out of the way early. And it’s pretty easy. There is no real comparison. Bohemian Rhapsody was a sound accomplishment in acting, directing, sound mixing, sound editing, cinematography, and more. It created a new audience of music lovers of the band Queen. It reacquainted fans of the band with the music and, for many, reminded them of why they loved the music, the band, and the man (Freddy Mercury) who provided the vocals for all of their songs.
Forrest Gump (1994)
It’s hard to think that in a three-year span, Tom Hanks (Big, Saving Private Ryan) went from playing an HIV-infected, highly successful business person who, despite being sick, filed a wrongful dismissal suit against his former employer (Philadelphia) to playing a man with an IQ of 75 who you manages to involve himself in just about every major American event between 1950 and 1980 (Forrest Gump) to the lead astronaut in the suspenseful true story landing of the Apollo 13 lunar mission when, after an oxygen tank explodes, the crew experiences numerous technical issues and tension with each other and the NASA base which, in turn, threatens their survival and safe return to earth (Apollo 13). This would be a defining career for many actors had they not appeared in other movies, but this was merely a three-year span (granted his most incredible three-year span) in Hanks’ career.